Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

1898-1901

  Chapter I

  The almost new moon sailed gently in and out behind billows of cumulus clouds moving slowly across Manila Bay. In his naval whites, David Hand leaned on the rail of the Olympia, staring out across the dark water at the lights of Manila. The morning’s victorious naval action against the ridiculously inept Spaniards had conquered the city yet left him with a nagging sense of anticlimax.

  From the commodore’s “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley” through that odd halt in hostilities to eat breakfast to the final silencing of the last Spanish shore battery, none of it was as his father had described war: a bloody, brutal, stinking, clumsy affair that sickened and terrified rather than exalted the participants. Well, what could you expect of Father? David’s mouth tightened. He even wondered now if his father hadn’t perhaps made a lot of it up, though he had to admit that the old boy had never spoken of his battle experiences until David announced he was going to Annapolis and intended to become a career naval officer.

  Even as a young boy, David’s one passion had been games of war. Seated at the chessboard with his grandmother Elisabeth, who had taught him the game, he needed only to imagine himself a general on a battlefield to give her a run for her money. He was especially fascinated with naval warfare and went to sleep at night envisioning the Greek naval victories against the Persians at Salamis and Mycale; feisty John Paul Jones making fools of the British during the Revolution; the campaigns of Horatio Nelson against the French; the battles of the Monitor and the Merrimac, the Kearsarge and the Alabama during the Civil War. Battles on land he found interesting but messy; it was the battles at sea that had the clean sharp clarity that drew him. There were few problems of terrain at sea to muddy the precise positioning and movement of the ships, not unlike men on the chessboard.

  This engagement in Manila Bay had not proved to have been like that at all, mainly because of the downright foolishness of the Spaniards. They had not apparently even had wits enough to remove and throw overboard any unnecessary woodwork, which exploding shells turned into lethal shrapnel and then into funeral pyres. The inexplicable failure to mine the entrances to the bay, the failure to arm properly the shore batteries on the islands of Corregidor, Caballo, and El Fraile, the failure to fire what few guns had been mounted on these islands, the failure of Admiral Montojo to back his fleet up to the gun batteries of Manila, all of these failures and many more added up to more than three hundred Spanish sailors butchered and eight Spanish ships abandoned or destroyed as against a few wounded, none dead, and no American vessels lost. For the Spaniards it had been messy indeed, with ships burned, men razored bloodily by shrapnel, and many drowned below-deck as their ship plunged to the bottom of the bay.

  David’s sense of order was outraged by the battle. There should have been the grand maneuvering, the poste and reposte, the majestic graceful dance of warships engaging at sea. Instead there had been this clumsy one-sided slaughter that had hardly seemed like a battle at all except for the harmless noise of the inaccurate Spanish shells. It might be years, he thought with dismay, before he had another opportunity to participate in a full-scale naval engagement.

  He began to go over in his mind what he would have done in Montojo’s place. Backed by the Manila shore batteries, he was sure that he could have given Dewey a run for his money.

  His thoughts jumped to Manila. There were men aboard who had been to Manila in merchantmen before joining the navy, and there had been much good-natured joking and horseplay on the subject of Filipino girls. The men were animals, gross animals who wanted nothing more than a loveless, graceless rutting with women whose favors they purchased. His relationship with Janice was so completely different that it was difficult for him to think of her at the same time he thought of the brothels ashore in naval ports. He himself had never been to one, but he could imagine them all too well. Often he had seen the drunken women coming brazenly right onto the docks with men returning from liberty ashore, their faces smeared obscenely with the lip rouge of the whores with whom they had sullied themselves.

  Janice. Blond, long-legged, handsome rather than pretty. What he enjoyed most about her was her unfailing common sense. Unbidden and unwelcome came the memory of their honeymoon. He had been almost as virginal as she, his only previous sexual experience a clumsy degrading encounter with an Irish maid in the house when he was sixteen. They had had their honeymoon in Rehobath right after his graduation from the nearby naval academy in Annapolis. The frame house at the beach was weathered almost silver, and no matter how many times they swept the floors, there were always delicate drifts of sand and salt that gritted beneath their feet. The sheets when they got into the large sagging old double bed always seemed damp, and when his ten days’ leave was up, he found that his uniform shoes had already grown a sheen of green mildew.

  While he unharnessed and stabled the horse, she had opened up the house, which belonged to friends of his mother-and father-in-law. That evening they ate dinner from the contents of a picnic basket they had brought with them: cold chicken, potato salad, hard-boiled eggs, and a strawberry pie. They had also brought a bottle of champagne, which they nervously drank in quick swallows. No one would ever have guessed that they had grown up together as they talked in overly loud nervous voices, their conversation often brought up short in awkward pauses.

  When at last they could put it off no longer, they reluctantly trailed upstairs and again awkwardly separated in order to get into their nightclothes. The arch of flashing swords wielded by David’s classmates through which he and Janice had run laughing that morning seemed very distant now in the damp cool silence broken only by the rhythmic low roaring sound of waves breaking on the beach. When he came back into the bedroom, she was already under the covers, looking scared and quite unfamiliar with her hair loose about her shoulders, a high-necked, long-sleeved ruffled nightgown primly hiding all but her hands and head. He shivered as he climbed into bed.

  “David?” she said in a small voice. “Uh, am I supposed to take this off, do you think?”

  “Well, no, I don’t think so,” he answered inanely. He didn’t have the faintest idea of what she was supposed to do. Mary, the Irish maid to whom he had lost his virginity, had arranged everything in the dark in a very practiced way, and while he was vague about the details, he did remember that she hadn’t removed her nightgown or his either. Gingerly he put his arms around Janice, and with a sigh she snuggled up against his chest. He could feel her tremble and rather thought that he was probably shaking, too. They had never done more than kiss quite chastely, which he proceeded to do now. She lay quiet in his arms as he kissed her mouth, and with a sudden inspiration he put his hand on one of her breasts, which felt soft and shapeless beneath all the ruffles. According to his more precocious classmates, that was supposed to excite everybody, and now he wished desperately that he had paid more attention to their tales of sexual prowess, for she still lay quiet and faintly trembling.

  In an agony of embarrassment, he at last began to hitch up her nightgown, which seemed to go on forever. By the time he at last found the bottom of it, there was an unwieldy rumpled clump of material rucked up around the top of her legs. Should he work his own nightshirt up now or wait until they were further along? He decided to do it then and stopped kissing her closed lips as he shifted about to get the nightshirt up over his hips. When he reached down with one hand to feel how ready he was, he was horrified to discover himself as soft as her breast had felt. He tried furtively to stroke himself into an erection with one hand while absently rubbing her breast with the other.

  Perhaps if he got up on top of her, everything would just naturally happen … It didn’t, of course, and he was left trying ignominiously to put his half-erect member into a place that as far as he could find out simply didn’t exist. She tried to help him, but she was almost as ignorant of her anatomy as was he. In the end they lay gasping and sweating from simple exertion, their marriage still unconsummated.

  “God, I�
�m sorry, Janice. I — I can’t seem to —”

  “No, David, it’s all my fault. There must be, well, something wrong with me.”

  “Do you really think so? We’ll take you to a doctor tomorrow,” he said hastily, with relief rolling off her and straightening his nightshirt. “I’m sure it won’t be anything that can’t be fixed,” he added reassuringly, though guiltily he wondered what would happen if it couldn’t be fixed.

  He woke in the dim light of dawning day to find himself pressed up against her back by the sag in the middle of the bed. During whatever turning and thrashing they had done during the night, her nightgown and his nightshirt had worked themselves up around their waists, and their naked bodies lay sleep-warm against each other. His already erect flesh began then to ache and throb as it lay in the fold of her bottom, and a crashing wave of desire suddenly washed over him. He took her shoulders in his hands and blindly thrust with his hips, finding the right orifice more by accident than by design. He was stopped briefly by some invisible barrier, but another strong thrust broke him through, and even as she gave a little gasping cry he thrust once more and felt his life spurt out of him into that tender moist warmth.

  For a moment it was as if some miraculous vision was about to burst upon him, but as his breathing slowed he felt instead a vast despair so overwhelming that it was all he could do not to weep. He withdrew, feeling himself wet and sticky, and the despair turned to guilt and distaste.

  Without a word he rose and went down the hall to the bathing room, where he washed himself with soap and cold water. Instead of going back to bed, he wordlessly dressed with his back to her while she watched him silently with large eyes from the bed, and going downstairs he then set off down the beach, running until he was exhausted. When he reluctantly returned several hours later, she had the wood range going, and the reassuring smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the kitchen. They never spoke of that night, nor of any of the infrequent other nights during the three years before he was transferred to the Pacific Fleet.

  Staring now at the dark water lapping at the ship’s side, he had another memory, one he hadn’t thought of for a long time. It was one of the earliest memories he had, of sitting in a metal tub of warm water that just covered his legs and bottom. He was perhaps three or four years old, and Anna was soaping his back with the big bath sponge. His mother was at the office late, as she always was when his father was away overseeing the building of another ship or troubleshooting at the docks in New York or Liverpool. Another black mark against his father, taking her away from him like that.

  He remembered clearly even now the sensuous warmth of the water, the pleasant feel of the soapy sponge on his back, the smell of the soap, the talcum-powder smell of German Anna. He had felt a pleasurable stirring between his legs at the time, and the two of them watched in horror as the small guilty piece of flesh erected itself until it stood boldly up out of the water, a stiffly standing telltale little rod that he knew instinctively was wicked to obtrude itself like that. Anna let out a snort of disgust and gave him a clout on the side of the head that made his ears ring. She hit the wildly weeping child two more stinging slaps before the offending flesh subsided. “Bad boy!” she kept panting hoarsely. “Bad, bad boy!”

  Though they never talked of such things, he was willing to bet that Double had never undergone any experience even remotely like that. His sister’s real name was Arabella, but for some reason he had never known, the family had always called her Double, possibly to distinguish her from Aunt Arabella, that fantastic woman who with her feather boas, long jet earrings, enormous flowered hats, and wafts of expensive perfume periodically swept into their lives and as mysteriously vanished again. A joke his mother had come out with made him think that his father and this woman might once have had an affair.

  One Sunday morning when he was nine he had gone downstairs to find the kitchen range still banked from the night before and no preparations for breakfast. Panicked, he had run upstairs and thrown open the door to his parents’ room. At first he thought that his father was attacking his mother, for he was crouching over her naked and she was moaning. The boy was about to beat at his father with his fists when something suddenly made him see that whatever this brutal act was, they were both actively engaged in it.

  “Come with me, love — come with me now!” his father shouted, and she answered with a cry, arching her body up under his.

  Not until years later did he know where they went; he only knew that he was left behind, sickened and strangely terrified. He turned and left the room then, silently closing the door behind him, and crept trembling into his own bed.

  Looking back, he was always surprised that he had never hated Double, who seemed to suffer none of the traumas that had been his lot. Nowhere near as good-looking as David was, Double had her father’s tawny coloring and her mother’s beaky nose, but she was a happy child, gay and good-natured. Far from suffering, it was Double who was her father’s favorite. He would sweep her up into his arms and hold her there for a moment, a look of great joy on both their faces. With David he always contented himself with shaking his hand solemnly and ruffling his hair. Until that terrible scene David had stumbled upon when he was nine, he used to have waking dreams about saving his father’s life — in sailboats, fires, floods, waves, all manner of disasters and accidents. After having seen his father make love to his mother, however, the daydreams changed into visions of revenge in which David would leave him to drown or be killed by robbers. Inside that strikingly handsome red-gold head, behind those clear sapphire-blue eyes, there lived a rage and hate that often only narrowly missed bursting free.

  Never had he come closer to losing control than when his father sat him down when he was fourteen and discussed women and intercourse with him. That this monster who raped his mother — David had conveniently forgotten her willing participation as being too painful to contemplate — dared to talk to him of love was almost more than he could bear.

  Christian was matter-of-fact but very thorough. He talked about ways of avoiding pregnancy, both superstitious and real. “The only absolutely sure way,” he ended wryly, “is not to fornicate at all.” From there he went on to speak about attitudes. “Do not ever,” he advised, “bed down a girl you don’t at least like, and don’t ever sneer at a girl for giving in to you, for you are then sneering at yourself as well. And never, never, discuss a girl you’ve made love to with your friends. If she’s good enough to please your body, she’s good enough to merit your affection even if not your love.”

  What about love? David raged silently. Was that disgusting act I saw you performing on my mother anything to do with love? You can’t have any idea what love really is.

  “If you are very fortunate,” his father said gently, “you will one day know love. Until then, no one can tell you about it. My father had that fortune, I have had it, and my dearest wish for you is that one day you will know it as well. I realize that we haven’t been very close, David, but I want to remedy that. Next week I am sailing for England to plan the fitting out of the Arabella, and I want you to come with me. Aunt Arabella will be christening her.”

  The entire trip was a disaster. David sulked clear across the Atlantic, for he had intended to spend that summer working on models of the British and French ships involved in Nelson’s victory in the Battle of the Nile. He detested Jack Carr on sight, and found the Compton shipyard to be a messy, disorganized, noisy chaos that repelled his every instinct for order. David had worked for two previous summers in his grandfather’s shipyard under Elam’s son Adam, but the building of sailing ships was a far cleaner, quieter operation than the smoke and racket and stink of a steel steamship in the making.

  What rankled him even more was the respect and liking that most of the workmen from Carr on down obviously had for his father, who was thoroughly at home with the complex operations that went into the building of a ship. Resentfully he watched his father move easily about the yard in his shirtsleeves, balancing
gracefully on narrow crossbeams, joking with the men, making a shrewd suggestion here and encouraging with a quiet word a tricky bit of work there. When his father tried to explain to him each step of what was going on, he listened stonily, not really trying to understand. In his opinion the business of building ships for what was essentially pleasure cruising and then of attracting wealthy passengers was inglorious money-grubbing, and he for one meant to have no part of it.

  At sixteen he had taken no little pleasure in the look of pain on his father’s face when he announced that he had decided upon a naval career and planned to go to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He was disappointed, however, that there was no open battle, for he had looked forward for months to delivering the devastating remarks that he had lain awake nights formulating.

  “I won’t say I’m not sorry, David — I’d looked forward to turning over the business to you one day.” He passed his hand wearily over his face. “I don’t mind so much that you’ll not follow in the business, though — after all, I didn’t follow your grandfather, either — as I mind the career you’ve chosen. To make your life’s work the waging of war almost has me wishing you had never been born.”

  He went on then to tell David his views on war, and he illustrated his lecture with vivid scenes from his own experience of battles and hospitals. David shrugged mentally. There would be no mud or lice or smell or short rations in a naval war, that he knew, and he stopped listening, picturing himself instead on the bridge of a battlewagon directing a brilliant maneuver that would put the enemy at his mercy.

  At twenty he brought home Stephen Nye, his best friend at the academy, to spend their leave in Boston. Stephen was David’s opposite, which was what may have attracted them to each other in the beginning. Where David was handsome, brilliant, and cool, but curiously inept at athletics, Stephen was merely pleasant-looking, but good-humored, easygoing, and a natural athlete. While for the most part his grades were not far above passing, he showed an unexpected completely intuitive grasp of naval tactics and strategy. David reasoned his way through the theoretical tactical problems presented to them, aided by the experience his vast knowledge of naval history gave him, but Stephen reached equally brilliant solutions, many of them completely unorthodox, by instinctive and inspired leaps that bore no relation to conventional rationality. This intuitive tactical sense fascinated David, and they became fast friends.